The shelter
by SimplyUnmistakable
Summary: Being a mother it's not about living a dream. It's about leaving it in a shelter.


**Prologue**

I have friends that said they only felt they had a purpose in life just after their kids were born, that life was senseless and sad, that children were their most powerful reason to live.

"Being a mother won't get you to self-fulfillment," I tell them. Being a mother can't be a woman's life purpose. It just has no sense and you would lie yourself by claiming you succeeded if your children succeeded. Being a mother it's not about achieving your dreams, but leaving them behind, dreaming the child's dreams, feeling the child's sadness or happiness, following the child's purpose in life.

One can be a good mother just after her own dreams are granted. Then, instead of not having anything else to reach for, live for, there comes someone else's purpose to fight for. If a woman has a child before self-fulfillment, she's be too busy doing it during the child's life, so become a rather careless mother, while, if she dedicates herself to the child and her dream is never reached, she'll guide the child along the road she'd have chosen if she had the chance, instead of looking for the child's real dream so, again, be not such a good mother.

It might seem to be a rather tough thought, but I can't have one little thing destroying my life. I can't just leave my every dream behind. I'd never let a child ruin my life.

** *1***

"We're almost there," I hear my sister's enthusiastic voice through the muggle telephone. A sound of relief comes from behind her, from... my niece, Adriana.

Dominique giving up her Auror training to become a single mother was quite a shock for our parents. A real deception. But I'm sure she knew the most deceptioned was her sister, that annoying woman with her rambling about how becoming pregnant destroys a woman's life. Though, that doesn't mean I'd turn my back on her. Adriana made her life take a rather hard twist for a couple of years. If I hadn't been there for her, who would have?

"You know, I could have had Teddy coming to pick you up from the station. How can you handle all the luggage?"

"We're doing... great on... our own." The hard breaths she needs to take while speaking aren't convicing. Same with Adriana's sounds of protest.

"Oh, Victoire, it's my holiday. Let me enjoy it. I haven't walked the parisian streets for so long! Besides, we're just some streets away by now. If you looked out the window, you'd see us," and she hangs up and probably waves in the direction of my house, too, expecting me to wave back. But I don't look out the window.

I throw the letter I was reading before her call between some of my papers from work - I'll handle that later - and go upstairs to check once again the room I prepared for them.

Though, the sight out the window could have been unforgattable for me, indeed.

***

"Stupid details like toilet paper!" I mutter to myself, trying to fix the roll into place.

There is a loud sound outside. I wince. The paper roll falls off my hands. A cry. The sound of a gathering crowd. I get up, jump down the stairs and pick some shoes on my way to the door. I have to walk Dom and Adriana out of anything is happening right there. The parisian streets are probably not really wonderful right now.

The sound of an ambulance. I get the thought that ambulances are normally not that fast, but I guess it's not something to be bothered about, especially if something that urgent happened.

I'm out the door and in the street, looking for the sourse of the general distress. Up the street there is the crowd. There is the ambulance, alreary leaving. And there is Teddy breaking through the crowd, a crying Adriana in his arms. I get dizzy, leaning against the wall of a neighbour's house in order to not fall. Through the fog in my sight I see the ambulance driving away and I set myself to run. Though stupid, I run to catch the overspeeding ambulance, to make it give back to me one of the most precious ones I have on this Earth.

But the arm catches me in time. I fight as hard as I can and I probably can't much at the time because he manages to hold me in place despite the other girl he holds into. I guess I'm not more than the little girl right now.

"Dom! There... and... Dom!" my chocked cries are like shards of glass through my lungs and I'm trying hard to catch on breathing.

"I know, I know." He still has to take all those hits, because I'm not over fighting with him to let me go, although I know by now that it's useless and senseles. But my mind is way too occupied with a milion incoherent thoughts to register that. All I want is to catch that ambulance, although I have no idea why. Then I catch sight of the one occupying Teddy's other 's unconcious.

"She's ok, just shocked. I took her out of there before having to take the trip to hospital while seeing her mother... in that state," he says before me to ask anything. _That state_ he said is buzzing through my mind. How much of_ that state_ he saw? How bad is _that state_? But I don't ask those questions. I need to see it with my own eyes.

"We need to go... we need to...," I get back to my senses, stop fighting and get up, although still confused and in tears. I can't see clearly the path I'm walking. Once again, I'm thankful Teddy's arm is just around my trembling shoulders. He's telling me something, but I don't hear a thing. Everything around is echo, deaf mumbling.

I hold my arms tight around me as I see a foggy shadow of our neighbour, Mrs Creeddy. She talks something with Teddy and Adriana disappears in her husband's arms and inside their house. Mrs Creeddy tells me something. I can't make sense of what it is, but I see the pity in her eyes. She must try to comfort me. But nothing can comfort me. Only the sight of my sister, smiling, talking like a little child about the wonderful time they were going to have together. The sight of her sister _alive_.

_Alive_? Can it be? Can the situation be that bad? No, no, no.

Teddy gets me to the car and the fastest ride Teddy has ever made with that car seems like an eternity. Through my sobs, I'm ready to ask him how does he know to which of the hospitals to go. But even as confused as I am, I realize there's only one in Paris to which she can be - the Magic one.


End file.
